Graham Greene was one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century and
his influence on the cinema and theatre was enormous. He wrote five
plays and almost all of his novels, including "Brighton Rock", "The
Ministry of Fear" and "The End of the Affair", have been brought to the
screen. A superb storyteller, he also wrote the screenplays for such
classics as
Kleines Herz in Not (1948) and
Der dritte Mann (1949).
A colorful and larger-than-life figure, Greene traveled widely
throughout the world, from the jungles of Liberia to the Mexican desert
to the Far East and the Soviet Union. In World War Two was a member of
MI-6 (the British intelligence service) working with the double-agent
Kim Philby, and he numbered among his friends
such diverse personalities as Evelyn Waugh,
Noël Coward and Panamanian dictator Gen.
Omar Torrijos. A notorious womanizer, he
married only once but had a string of extra-marital affairs and
confessed he was "a bad husband and a fickle lover." During the 1920s
and 1930s he confessed that he had had relationships with over 50
prostitutes.
Born in Hertforshire, England, in 1904, the son of the headmaster of
Berkhamstead School, Greene was educated at Berkhamstead and later
Oxford. At Oxford he published more than 60 poems and stories and soon
after graduation converted to Roman Catholicism. "I had to find a
religion to measure my evil against" he said. His first novel, "The Man
Within", came out in 1929, to public and critical acclaim. "Stamboul
Train" (1934), a topical political thriller, was the first to reach the
screen (as Orient Express (1934))
and a string of other taut suspense dramas followed: "This Gun For
Hire" (1942), "The Ministry of Fear" (1943) and "The Confidential
Agent" (1945). It was his novel "Brighton Rock", however, which
depicted Pinkie, a teenage gangster with demonic spirituality, that
eventually became a milestone in British cinema. Originally a
successful stage play starring
Richard Attenborough as Pinkie,
Greene co-wrote the 1947 screenplay
Brighton Rock (1948)) with
Terence Rattigan.
Greene's collaboration with director
_Carol Reed' produced three
distinctive films: Kleines Herz in Not (1948),
starring Ralph Richardson,
Der dritte Mann (1949) and
Unser Mann in Havanna (1959). One
of the peaks in British filmmaking, "The Third Man", starring
Orson Welles as Harry Lime, was a skillful
tale of deception and drug trafficking. Greene developed the screenplay
from a single sentence: "I had paid my last farewell to Harry a week
ago, when his coffin was lowered into the frozen February ground, so
that it was with incredulity that I saw him pass by, without a sign of
recognition, amongst a host of strangers in the Strand". The character
of Harry Lime later inspired an American radio series starring Orson
Welles, short stories published by the News of the World and the TV
series Gefährliche Geschäfte (1959),
starring Michael Rennie. In
Peter Jackson's
Heavenly Creatures (1994).
Kate Winslet fantasizes about Harry.
As well as writing novels, Greene reviewed films for "The Spectator",
then for the short-lived "Night and Day", which folded after he was
accused of a "gross outrage" on
'Shirley Temple (I)'--then nine years
old--in his review of
Rekrut Willi Winkie (1937). He
wrote that "her admirers--middle-aged men and clergymen--respond to her
dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little
body, packed with enormous vitality". In the view of the prosecuting
counsel it was "one of the most horrible libels one could well
imagine."
Greene was an intelligent and sophisticated playwright. His first play
written directly for the stage was "The Living Room" (1953), a powerful
drama of suicide and despair which starred
Dorothy Tutin. It was followed by "The
Potting Shed" (1957), a drama about an atheist's pact with God, and
"The Complaisant Lover" (1959), a comedy of manners in which a husband
and lover knowingly share a wife's favors, which starred
Michael Redgrave. Many of his played
were televised.
Greene's work continues to fascinate actors, filmmakers and cinema goers
throughout the world. In 1973
Maggie Smith and
Alec McCowen starred in "Travels With My
Aunt" (Smith's role had originally been offered to
Katharine Hepburn),
Nicol Williamson and
Ann Todd starred in
Der menschliche Faktor (1979) and
Ralph Fiennes and
Julianne Moore starred in a remake of
Das Ende einer Affäre (1999).
Greene said of his writing: "When I describe a scene . . . I capture it
with the moving eye of the cine-camera rather than with the
photographer's eye--which leaves it frozen. In this precise domain I
think the cinema has influenced me."
Towards the end of his life Greene lived in Vevey, Switzerland, with
his companion Yvonne Cloetta. He died there peacefully on April 13,
1991.
